The stroll to Georgia Tech’s Bobby Dodd Stadium takes you previous fraternity homes with couches within the yard, dorms with spray-painted bedsheets, tutorial buildings stuffed with knowledge-hungry college students even on a soccer Saturday. (That is Georgia Tech, in any case.) Positive, you’ll must step frivolously; the sidewalk is usually cracked, beer cans are in all places, and there are all the time random rooster wing bones to keep away from. (This is Atlanta, after all.) However once you arrive on the century-plus-old concrete behemoth, you’re totally within the temper for some school soccer. And if it’s the final Saturday in November, you’re stuffed with Clear Previous-Common Hate.
The stroll to Atlanta’s close by Mercedes-Benz Stadium, in contrast, is huge and clear, thoughtfully designed and masterfully executed, over sidewalks pristine sufficient to eat rooster wings off of — not that you just’ll see any. There’s a tastefully deliberate and regimented Tailgating Zone — sponsored by a sure Atlanta-based house enhancements firm, after all — and the complete expertise shouldn’t be not like strolling right into a cathedral, nearly overwhelming in its grandeur.
Subsequent 12 months, Mercedes-Benz will host “Clear Previous-Common Hate,” the annual Georgia-Georgia Tech rivalry recreation — the primary time since 1912 that the Georgia Tech-hosted half of the rivalry gained’t be performed at Bobby Dodd. It’s the newest instance of the rising NFL-ization of school soccer — and, sadly, it’s additionally utterly comprehensible, given the brand new monetary realities of the faculty recreation. Taking part in a rivalry recreation in an NFL stadium will present, in the words of Georgia Tech athletic director J Batt, “a transformative income elevate” — and, in school soccer’s wild new world, custom is a cupcake and income a behemoth.
True, old-timey stadiums, even retrofitted ones, aren’t as aesthetically pleasing as fashionable creations. Aluminum benches aren’t as welcoming to alumni butts as cushioned membership chairs. The Saturday afternoon solar is much more tolerable in an air-conditioned monolith than a concrete grandstand. Parking is a nightmare, site visitors is “Strolling Useless”-level apocalyptic, and good luck attempting to get a postgame chew to eat in a university city.
However so what? Spend one afternoon at a rivalry recreation — the Iron Bowl, The Sport, the Egg Bowl, Clear Previous-Common Hate, any of 100 others — and also you’ll perceive it on a primal degree. The solar shines a bit brighter, the popcorn and sizzling canines style a bit higher, and the band sounds so a lot better in a university stadium.
At a rivalry recreation, alumni can level to the realm of the stadium the place they have been sitting after they have been college students. Present college students can reunite with highschool buddies who selected the opposition. Associates, colleagues, shoppers all mingle in tents and tailgates earlier than and after the sport, and when everybody takes a aspect, everybody wins.
There’s no debating the truth that Mercedes-Benz is among the most interesting stadiums on the earth, and an distinctive surroundings for big-time soccer. It’s hosted one Tremendous Bowl — the 2019 Patriots-over-Rams snoozer, however that’s not the stadium’s fault — and will host another in 2028. It’s the positioning of Alabama’s well-known second-and-26 nationwide title win over Georgia in 2018, and can host this season’s school soccer title recreation. Yearly, MBS hosts the SEC championship, the Chick-fil-A Kickoff Basic and Peach Bowl, and a minimum of one Georgia Tech house recreation, together with this 12 months’s Notre Dame matchup taking place on Saturday.
All of these video games are spectacular, usually transcendent experiences. And none of them are rivalry video games, steeped in wonderful, messy, transcendent custom.
Georgia and Georgia Tech have performed for thus lengthy that there’s not an individual on earth alive when this collection began. Granted, the collection hasn’t precisely been aggressive these days — Georgia has gained the final six and 12 of the final 14 — however rivalries aren’t nearly on-field outcomes. (Georgia Tech followers have a complete armload of coping jokes on the prepared — “What does a Georgia grad name a Georgia Tech grad? ‘Boss’” is about the one one we will print.) The Kirby Sensible period at Georgia has tilted the rivalry firmly eastward, within the course of Athens.
That, partially, is behind Georgia Tech’s choice to maneuver the sport. AMB Sports activities Enterprises — Falcons proprietor Arthur Clean’s umbrella group — can pay Georgia Tech $10 million to play only one installment of the rivalry recreation at Mercedes-Benz Stadium. Ten million for one recreation is a hell of a paycheck to maneuver a recreation one mile south. You might depend the variety of athletic administrators who would decline that deal on no arms.
In an open letter to Georgia Tech fans, Batt outlined the bills dealing with Georgia Tech because it seeks to return to its nationwide championship-level methods, beginning with the monetary realities of the impending House settlement over student-athlete compensation.
“To compete for championships on the highest degree within the post-Home period, athletics packages might want to make an extra monetary funding of a minimum of $20-22 million yearly to take part in student-athlete income sharing on the most degree, which is crucial to compete with our friends,” Batt wrote. “Whereas on the identical time, we are going to obtain about $1 million much less in annual distributions from the ACC, which is able to go in the direction of our share of the $3 billion in again damages.”
Abruptly, a $10 million examine to play one single recreation now makes a complete lot extra sense, financially if not traditionally. Whether or not you see revenue-sharing as lengthy overdue or a betrayal of school soccer’s bedrock ethos isn’t the difficulty any longer; both manner, the invoice has come due.
In his letter to Yellow Jacket followers, Batt has dedicated to returning the 2027 Georgia recreation to Bobby Dodd — although not 2029, 2031 and past. Possibly that was an oversight, or perhaps it was only a matter of protecting choices open for future transformative income lifts. Nothing is off the desk at this level within the school soccer universe.
The 2025 Georgia-Georgia Tech recreation shall be one other feisty one on the sphere, and pregame message boards, podcasts and sports activities speak radio will mild up the identical manner. However once you begin monetizing nostalgia and turning custom right into a commodity, one thing ineffable however important is misplaced. “Sterile, Local weather-Managed Hate” simply doesn’t really feel proper, does it?
